Draper headers employ endless belt conveyors to convey crop from a reciprocating knife or cutter bar to the combine harvester vehicle that supports the draper header and carries the draper header through the agricultural field. Once in the combine harvester vehicle, the crop is threshed, separated, and cleaned.
Draper headers have endless belt conveyors that carry the crop laterally (the left and right side conveyors) to a center portion of the draper, and a center conveyor that receives the crop from these side conveyors and transmits it to rearward and to the combine harvester.
The endless belts for the draper header periodically wear out. When they wear out they must be replaced. The typical method of replacing the endless belts is to break them longitudinally at a splice and work them out of the machine, around rollers and through narrow spaces. This process is time consuming. It has been proposed, therefore to leave the belt intact in the form of an endless loop, to disconnect the forward ends of the rollers and to slide the endless belts of the left and right side conveyors off the rollers that support the endless belt.
Given the size and weight of the left and right side conveyors, this process can be difficult if not impossible for a single person, or even for a pair of people to do. It would therefore be beneficial to provide draper conveyors with mechanical assistance capable of lifting and/or holding the rollers to/in an elevated position as the belts are removed. It is an object of this invention to provide such an arrangement.